


rising from its unmarked bed

by westwind



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Collars, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22151302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwind/pseuds/westwind
Summary: "His fascination with Halas’s labyrinth is dangerous, the others warn him, and he knows. His mind circles back to it endlesslybecauseit is dangerous."Caleb fixes up the mage-silencing collar he took from the Folding Halls of Halas. On an evening of self-loathing and frustration, he looks for solace in its properties—with Fjord's help.
Relationships: Fjord/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 10
Kudos: 160





	rising from its unmarked bed

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Old Black Magic" by Josh Ritter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37jimrogxMw).

The ring of metal is warm in Caleb’s hands. He slides his fingers along its circumference and over the grooves where a rune is etched into its surface, learning its texture with the pad of his thumb.

The mage-silencing collar had been scratched and nicked by Nott’s fumbling with her lockpick, but Caleb buffed out the imperfections and polished it anew when he repaired its enchantment. It had been quiet, solitary work done during snatched moments in the Xhorhaus workshop—he wasn’t interested in fueling the others’ worries about his fascination with Halas’s labyrinth. It’s dangerous, they warn him, and he knows. His mind circles back to it endlessly _because_ it is dangerous.

A tendril of that same moth-to-flame yearning rises in his throat as he sets the collar back on his desk with a soft clink. There is one in their group who doesn’t treat him as if he’s fragile, likely to unravel if one of his threads were pulled. But what Caleb wishes to ask of him . . . Caleb fears to lose that confidence. 

Tonight, fear is eclipsed by a hungry itch living in the empty spaces between his ribs. He taps two fingers against the metal before standing and crossing the workshop. Looks at Nott’s closed door, once—the smooth-grained wood faces him accusingly. He could not place this coiled, shapeless, nameless thing in her lap. He walks on, into the foyer and up the stairs.

When Fjord answers the knock at his door, he’s shrouded in soft lamplight, hair falling across his face and shirt coming untucked. Candles and incense burn beside the rug on the floor—he must have been meditating, or speaking with his god.

Answering warmth flickers in Caleb until the empty thing inhabiting him curls away from the glow and shows its teeth. He doesn’t want this Fjord, now. He came to see the Fjord of layered armor and shoulders always perfectly straight. 

“Caleb?” Fjord prompts while he searches for the words he’d pieced together.

“Fjord.” There. One word. Then, “I was hoping you might help me with something. A favor.”

That has the desired effect—Fjord’s eyes flick upward on “favor” before narrowing slightly. “Sure, of course. I can do that.” He turns back to his room for a moment, stooping to pinch out the candle flames before Caleb can analyze his expression any further.

They go back down the dim halls together, Caleb one step ahead and Fjord following behind. On the stairs, Fjord asks, “You all right? It’s pretty late.”

Caleb doesn’t answer. Nods. He has such a finite store of words within him tonight, so little space to hold them. Fjord fills in the gap anyway, continuing, “Well, you’re always up late doing your wizard stuff, I guess.”

In the workshop, Caleb closes the door and turns the lock with a steady hand. Fjord doesn’t comment, just leans one hip against Nott’s workbench and waits.

“I, ah—I have been working on the enchantment for that collar the golem put on me, back in the Happy Fun Ball,” Caleb starts. He picks the collar up again.

“Sure. That was a nasty piece of work,” Fjord says.

Caleb coughs to cover the stutter building in his throat. “Indeed. But it could be useful to us, as well. And so I wanted—wanted to ask you to help test it, now that it is complete.”

Fjord crosses his arms as he moves into Caleb’s space to look down at the metal ring. “I don’t know about putting that thing on me,” he says. His tone is light, but his ears flatten back against his head as he speaks.

“No, no,” Caleb says quickly. “It will be around my neck. It is only that another person is required to lock and unlock the binding rune.” Awareness of Fjord close beside him makes the thing in his chest waken further. It nudges at him to sway Fjord’s choice with suggestion, with touch, but he chokes it down again. He can _trust_ Fjord, he doesn’t need to—

Fjord mirrors his thoughts, saying, “That seems like a lot of responsibility.” His eyes flick toward Nott’s room. “A lot of faith that I’ll be able to open it again, considering last time.”

“There is a certain place you must press, I will show you”—but now Fjord’s looking down at the collar, at Caleb’s hands trembling as he fidgets with the place where it opens.

Fjord grasps Caleb’s wrist, taking the collar out of his hands. He gives it easily, going limp in Fjord’s grip. The empty creature in Caleb stretches, lazily. 

“Hey,” Fjord says, and again when Caleb shows no sign of having heard him, “Hey. If something’s bothering you, we shouldn’t do this, not right now.”

Caleb finds the resolve to twist his wrist out of Fjord’s grip. “ _Nein_. I am fine. I asked you for a favor, and you said you would give it.”

Fjord’s hand hangs there for a moment before he pulls it back, holding the collar to his chest. “You can’t bullshit me about being fine, Widogast.” His eyebrows knit together. “Is this the sort of thing they did to you at Soltryce? What, did you pick me because you thought I’d hurt you if you asked?”

Anger flares so hot-bright behind Caleb’s eyes that he almost doesn’t notice how small Fjord looks, as he makes that last accusation. Fjord wasn’t supposed to see him as a damaged tool discarded by the Assembly. He wasn’t supposed to say it aloud. Fjord’s shoulders are hunched in on themselves, though, his lip curled over his newly grown tusks.

Caleb takes a careful breath in and lets it out. “No. No, they never took our magic away. And no, I do not think you would hurt me. I asked because I trusted you would not.” Truth, half-truth, lie. The last still comes easiest. 

“I’m sorry.” Fjord turns the collar in his hands. He doesn’t say anything else.

“Then you will do it,” Caleb says, touching Fjord’s shoulder—a slow uncurling in Caleb’s gut, a flash of fangs—to steer him toward the desk. “I will sit here.”

“Hold on,” Fjord interrupts before Caleb can pull back the chair. “How do I open the clasp?”

“Ah. Yes.” He places his hand over Fjord’s where Fjord still holds the collar. Guides his fingers across the rune, scarred knuckles feverish where they brush Fjord’s skin. When the catch opens, the soft click settles at the base of Caleb’s spine.

“Okay, then,” Fjord mutters, as if he’s saying it half to himself. Caleb sits at his desk, and Fjord’s breath ghosts along the back of his neck as he stoops to encircle Caleb’s throat with the ring of metal.

The catch clicks closed again, and all the threads in Caleb loosen. The magic that buzzes under his skin is gone. He flexes his fingers to feel the muscle stretch and pull without any arcane frisson beneath, watching the machinery of skin and tendon. And the words—he doesn’t need the words, now.

“All right?” Fjord asks. He still has one hand braced on the chair, and Caleb’s cheekbone brushes against it as he tilts his head back. Fjord’s hand is cool—the sensation sends a shiver through Caleb to replace the burn of magic.

Fjord peers into Caleb’s eyes. Caleb doesn’t know what he sees, but it makes him shift and say, “So. I guess it works, then. Let’s get it off.”

No, Caleb wants to say. He wants to drift on this formless tide forever. He wants Fjord to touch him again. But he deserves neither, and he cannot speak.

Caleb’s hair, unbound, has fallen over his shoulders, hiding the place fastened by the rune. Fjord gathers the strands to push it out of the way, and draws his hand over the nape of Caleb’s neck, and—the thing in his chest snaps its tether and bays the hunt. He arches his neck against Fjord’s fingers, warm-cool-warm pressed into one. The collar doesn’t allow any sound to escape him.

When the catch opens, the collar slips down Caleb’s chest to clink to the floor. Fjord hasn’t moved his hand away. “Are you . . .” He leaves the words hanging there, but he scrapes his blunt claws through the hair at the back of Caleb’s neck. Once more, lightly. Caleb curls his own fingers tight into his palms. 

As Fjord’s hand stills again, Caleb jerks his head forward like a string inside him’s been cut. “Thank you, Fjord.” The low rasp of his voice is unfamiliar. He scrabbles at the papers in front of him, reaches for a pen. “Good night.”

Fjord’s hand withdraws, and he steps back. From a distance, he says, “Yeah, Caleb. Good night.” And the sound of the door unlocking. Opening. Closing.

Caleb lets his shoulders fall until his forehead rests on solid wood. Everything is shaking, everything is too hot and too cold at once. He imagines claws slicing a seam from the knob of his spine to the base of his tailbone until he can step out of his body and into something else. When he can’t stand it any longer, he unlaces his trousers and brings himself off efficiently, silently, with one hand while the other digs half-circles into the meat of his thigh.


End file.
